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Dense crumb, poor ear and spring Development

August 11, 2017 - 11:30am

nsaubes

Dense crumb, poor ear and spring Development

Dear community:

I've been baking sourdough bread for a couple of month now. Although I've been improving on several aspects I'm still not satisfied with my loaves: 1) the crumb is too dense, I can't manage to get an airy crumb and, 2) I can't manage to get a nice ear and spring development, the surface of the bread stays smooth and flat...

I've been cold bulk fermenting and I also tried both cold bulk fermenting + cold final shape proofing.

Are those signs of overfermentation/proofing or underfermentation/proofing? Or is it because of other factors?

Process is: Autolysis 45 min (flour and water only), adding starter and salt, mixing in kitchen aid 5 min, hand kneading (stretch and fold type) 5 min, resting 1h30 at room temp (+/- 22-24°C) doing stretch and fold every 30 min, cold bulk fermentation in the fridge for 8 hrs, preshaping, resting 20 min at room temp, shaping, cold final shape proofing for 8 hrs, baked straight after taking out of the fridge in home oven on a pizza stone, throwing a glass of water at the bottom of the oven for steam.

Bottom crusts say a lot. Be sure to check every loaf and record what you see. See if you can move the pizza (thin) stone closer to the heat source or down one notch in the oven for more heat directly under the baking dough. This alone might be the only change needed. Remember to change only one variable at a time with each bake.

The refrigerator temp. plays a big role with this loaf so it would be good to know exactly what it is. Just for your notes.

I would like to know how the final proof was done... what the dough felt like after the first retard and for the final rise was the dough Inside a form or in a bowl or on a plate, etc. How was the surface feel of the loaf before it was baked? Soft, sticky and stretchy? Firm, partially dry? Anything you can remember. If slashed, how did that go for you?

Did you feel at any time you wanted to reshape and let the proof go on longer? High altitudes do affect the rise time and will give you a smaller window to bake when it is time to do so. This window of opportunity happens sooner than at lower elevations. Try reducing the hydration to increase the size of the window. Right now you have 75% hydration (total water divided by total flour x 100) Try 70%.

Now that the baked loaf is older, does the crumb look different when cut? Is it still heavy and moist?

The final proof was indeed done in a bowl covered with a plastic film. The surface of the loaf felt firm enough after the final proofing. On the other hand the dough wasn't looking great after the cold (I don't have the exact temperature...) bulk fermentation, it looked really flat...

Do you have any advice to help recognize that "window of opportunity", both at the and of bulk proofing and final proofing?

Also do you have any recommendations for the mixing/kneading part, especially about the use of the kitchen aid mixer (how long should I use it)? I have the feeling that my dough is not smooth enough...

I'll definitely try to reduce hydration. I'm suspecting that my flour is quite humid too (It's rainy season right now in Guatemala, humidity might be up to 90%). I have the feeling that if I follow a certain recipe with a certain % hydration my dough looks overhydrated compared to what the recipe describe/show... Would that make sense?

Now the crumb is a bit less wet than at the beginning but it still feels pretty dense.

Try dropping the hydration and see how that goes. Dough will respond to the ambient humidity and when it is high (I got rainy season too) it helps a lot to protect the dough from it when it is higher (or lower) than the dough hydration. Sourdoughs will feel "wetter" as fermentation progresses.

Don't know if I would want a smooth dough but one way of getting it would be to add only half the flour to the water and let it run in the mixer for a while (I can only guess how long, I use hand mixing, 5 min?) until smooth and then switch from beaters to dough hooks for the rest of the flour. That's the old method anyway. Then let the dough autolyse before adding sourdough getting it well dispersed before adding salt. Another is to use AP after bulking for bench flour instead of bread flour.

One way to check on dough rising in the fridge is to cut into it with a sharp knife and look at the gas bubbles forming in the dough. Bulk fermenting shouldn't rise more than double and is characterised by big large bubbles surrounded by dense dough. When the dough is flat after bulking it has either risen and fallen (which I seem to doubt unless the fridge is on the warm side) or the yeast just haven't got their populations up yet. The one and a half hours before chilling was most likely too short so I would let the dough rest one and a half hours, then follow up with another one and a half hours with the 30 min folds. (Personally, I think one folding is enough after 3 hours when the dough starts to puff up.) Then tuck into the fridge. You can play with this timing to tweak your rise times, a little tweak at this stage has a big impact later on and it can be that 3 hours is too long with warmer temps above 23°C.

As yeast by-products build up in the dough it becomes more important to fold the dough to maintain it's rising shape. Cut into into the dough to check on the gas formation and then slap the cut ends back together. It can easily happen that with stretch and folding, one looses track of the volume of the dough with some degassing going on. Cutting into the dough will give you the actual volume and you can see how the gas is distributed. (so will a see-thru dough container) That and skin tension will make it easier to know when to bake. After checking and slapping the dough back together, give it a folding if it needs it and tuck under the corners. You should then find it easier to estimate when the dough should be baked. Look carefully between the larger gas bubbles at the spaces between them. You want to see a large number of medium and minute bubbles resembling more a sponge than fresh dough. These will all expand in the oven heat. Very large bubbles get enormous during baking so I would pop anything larger than an olive or marble before baking.

A too relaxed dough surface will not hold up in the oven (think of the skin as a container) and if the dough has degraded too much waiting for yeast to build up, the dough can also start tearing apart and running sideways.

Should you find that final proofed dough too relaxed, give it a gentle set of folds tucking under the corners and resting with seam down for a quarter to half an hour, slash and bake. Dough is naturally stiffer coming out of the fridge so you will not have much aroma or relaxed surfaces when comparing to room risen dough.

timing, techniques used for mixing / kneading, and roughly where you are located (since elevation / weather / humidity all play a part) would definitely help narrow this down.

I'm also wondering whether you have ever tried doing it as a straight, one-day process without using either cold ferment or cold proof, so that you could feel and observe the dough at all stages of the process. If you have, what timing did you use, and did you have the same end result?

Hopefully you can give us more details so that you can get some solid suggestions!

Process is: Autolysis 45 min (flour and water only), adding starter and salt, mixing in kitchen aid 5 min, hand kneading (stretch and fold type) 5 min, resting 1h30 at room temp (+/- 22-24°C) doing stretch and fold every 30 min, cold bulk fermentation in the fridge for 8 hrs, preshaping, resting 20 min at room temp, shaping, cold final shape proofing for 8 hrs, baked straight after taking out of the fridge in home oven on a pizza stone, throwing a glass of water at the bottom of the oven for steam.

I've never done a straight one-day process, I've been willing to do it but cold fermentation really eases the organization! But I'll definitely try to do it as soon as possible, I know it will help me better understand how the starter and dough behaves.

How is your starter performing? Is it a 100% hydration starter, and if so, does it at least double, and become light, frothy and bubbly before you use it? What percentage of starter is there in the dough? Is the dough light, springy and stretchy after the bulk ferment? I'm thinking there isn't enough yeast action going on here.

Try adding just a little tiny bit (less than 1/8 tsp) of active dry or instant dry yeast to the final dough before bulk ferment, and see how that changes the dough. If the resulting dough and bread is much better, then perhaps your starter needs some attention.

The starter looks pretty active to me, it's bubbly when it's rising. It's 100% hydration and yes it doubles (approximately). I feed it every 12 hrs. There's 20% starter in the dough. I have to admit that I'm not satisfied with my dough after mixing/kneading and after bulk fermentation. It doesn't look smooth enough to me. I've been thinking that my process's timing might not respect my starter timing, what do you think?

There are several different posts on this site about the timing and strength (and yeast content) of starters. Here's a good one to read, especially Mini Oven's comments further down the post. There are many different kinds of yeast in a sourdough starter, and they peak at different times, so I think you might be on to something when you say the timing of the starter and of the dough might not correspond. So, maybe you have yeast that are very strong at 12 hours of room temperature, and they don't do so well over a different time period when put in the fridge. Maybe start with a tiny bit of starter and build it with successive feeds every, say, four hours until you have something really active.

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